When paving a roadway with asphalt, a layer of asphalt is laid down by a paver machine. This paver machine in the prior art typically includes a hopper on a forward portion thereof and a screed on a rearward portion thereof. The paver machine is typically self-propelled including drive wheels (or tracks), a motor, and a station for at least one operator, and typically one operator to drive the paver while another operator controls a height of the screed and other details of the operation of the paver.
Before the paver can be used, the hopper must be loaded with hot asphalt. Typically hot asphalt is manufactured at an asphalt plant, loaded into a dump truck, and then the dump truck travels to where the paver is located and where the paving of the roadway is occurring. The dump truck will then dump the asphalt into the hopper of the paver so that the paving can occur. With such dump truck direct loading of the hopper, the paver is less than entirely satisfactory in many circumstances. Asphalt cannot typically be dumped by tilting a bed of the dump truck on the largest of trucks, due to their great lengths, and greater capacity than the paver hopper.
Also, during handling of the asphalt it can often become somewhat segregated into different portions of the asphalt mix having different characteristics, rather than staying thoroughly mixed, in a phenomena called “segregation.” Finally, the asphalt carrying dump trucks typically have to remain on site until the paver is ready to receive a load of the asphalt from the dump truck. This can require multiple dump trucks sitting idol waiting for their “turn” to load the hopper of the paver. The dump trucks are not kept moving and efficiency (and costs) of the operation are negatively impacted. This problem is compounded when smaller dump trucks are required to accommodate the size of the hopper, which is typically smaller than a size which could be carried by the longest and largest capacity trucks.
The common way to solve this problem, and for efficient utilization of the asphalt carrying trucks, is to utilize trucks which dump from a belly of an asphalt trailer directly onto the ground in a “windrow,” and then have a separate machine which picks the asphalt up off of the ground and loads the hopper of the paver. Such a methodology allows the asphalt carrying trucks to keep moving substantially continuously, and not having to sit idle. However, once the asphalt is on the ground, a separate machine is required which can pick up the asphalt off of the ground and load it into the hopper of the paver. Also, a windrow of asphalt on the ground, unless acted upon quickly, has a somewhat excess tendency to cool, which is undesirable in asphalt paving. Furthermore, the segregation of different components within the asphalt mix when dumping onto the ground and picking up and loading into the hopper of the paver is to some extent accentuated.
One prior art method to deal with some of these problems is to utilize a remixer for both picking up the asphalt off the ground, remixing the asphalt back to a homogeneous character, and keeping the asphalt in a hopper of the remixer until it is ready to be loaded into the hopper of the paver. This tends to minimize surface area of a mass of asphalt that is exposed to the air, so that cooling of the asphalt mix is slowed at least somewhat. Such remixers can also be used with standard dump trucks to improve the quality of the asphalt being passed on to the paver. However, disadvantageously such remixers require one further complex machine to be purchased, maintained and operated, as well as the additional personnel to operate the remixer, so that inefficiencies still remain. Even if all of the vehicles act smoothly together, the complexity and length/size of the train of vehicles and various conveyors, leaves significant opportunity for undesirable asphalt cooling. Furthermore, the hopper within the remixer and the hopper within the asphalt paver are to some extent redundant. Accordingly, opportunities exist for further improvement of paving systems.